


love completes me ('cause it feels like i've been missing you)

by glowinghorizons



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 4+1 fic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 14:28:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4438991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowinghorizons/pseuds/glowinghorizons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the domestic bellarke modern!au 4+1 fic that no one asked for, but i wrote anyway,</p><p>or:</p><p>4 times clarke shows up at bellamy's apartment unannounced + 1 time she doesn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love completes me ('cause it feels like i've been missing you)

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i don't own "the 100", bellamy, clarke, or any of the other characters. i don't own the song that i used for the title and as inspiration, which is "love is easy" by mcfly.

_i._  
  
The first time Clarke Griffin shows up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, he’s ready to tell whoever it is that it’s _one in the goddamn_ morning. But, when he opens the door and sees her, eyes red and puffy, what else is he supposed to do but let her in?

 

The old him would have told her "I told you so" and probably made a really ill mannered joke, but something about how dull her eyes are and how tired she looks stops all the words from falling off his tongue. She murmurs something about Finn, that floppy-haired frat guy she's been seeing and he sighs, pulling her into the circle of his arms the minute he sees her face crumble.

 

"You're okay, you're okay," he tells her over and over, until the shaking stops and the tears subside. By then, he's guided them over to his overstuffed couch, and she's pushing him away, insisting that she's fine. "Clarke--"

 

"I... No, I'm okay. I should go."

 

"You just got here," he protests, but lets her go, watching as she stumbles towards the door, trying to find her purse. "Clarke--"

 

"I'm sorry I showed up here without calling. You shouldn't have to worry about your sister's friends like this. I’ll go, Bell. Thanks." She says, not letting him get a word in, and before he can blink, she's out the door.

 

The next morning, he finds a card and a dozen donuts outside his apartment door, with a messily scrawled _"Thanks again, - C"_ written across the top of the box.

 

He smiles and makes a mental note to kick Finn's ass the next time he sees him.

 

/////////

 

_ii._

The second time Clarke Griffin shows up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, she beats him there, and is slumped down in front of the door when he gets there, her heels kicked off and her purse in her lap.

 

He furrows his brow as he gets closer and she looks up at the noise his keys make as they dangle from his index finger. "Clarke?"

 

"You act like you're surprised to see me here at two in the morning," she jokes, but he can tell she's upset. "Octavia isn't answering her phone. I don't have anywhere else to go," she tells him, her voice cracking on the last syllable, and something in his chest tightens at the sound.

 

"Fair warning," he replies, his tone light, "I smell like cheap beer."

 

Her mouth quirks up in a smile as he pulls her to her feet, "I like cheap beer."

 

He holds the door open for her and fights the urge to ask her what's wrong. They're not close enough, and he doesn't think she would tell him anyway. They're not that type of friends -- the kind that spill their life secrets to each other in the middle of the night.

 

He's known Clarke for about three years, since she became Octavia's roommate her first semester in college. He thought she was a snobby rich girl living off a trust fund, and she thought he was a self-serving asshole. Life went on, and he can admit now that he didn't try very hard to change Clarke's opinion of him.

 

Over the years, Octavia moved out, Clarke moved out, and somehow Bellamy's friends became Octavia and Clarke's friends, and the rest is history.

 

"Can I... Can I use your shower?" Clarke's asking him, and he balks before shaking out of his stupor.

 

"Yeah. Yeah, of course. There are extra towels in the hall closet."

 

"Thanks, Bellamy. I'm sorry for just showing up here, I--"

 

"Clarke." Bellamy takes a step towards her, "I think we can stop pretending that we hate each other now, okay?"

 

She snorts, and then slaps her hand over her mouth almost as if she's trying to take back the sound. "I've never hated you, Bell."

 

"Back at you, Princess," he says and he can't fight the wide smile that stretches across his face at the sound of her laugh. He leaves her a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt outside the bathroom door, and when she comes out of the shower, they order Chinese food and yell at the baseball game on the TV until she falls asleep.

 

He never asks her what made her so upset, and he never questions why she came to his apartment instead of Monty's, or wait at his sister’s.

 

Instead, he goes out the next morning and buys donuts from the same place she bought the ones she left on his doorstep all those weeks ago. He makes it back to the apartment before she wakes up, and when she stumbles out of his bedroom, wearing his clothes, he smirks at her and hands her a donut, watching the way her eyes light up at the sight of him holding out a pastry to her.

 

It feels normal. He likes it.

 

///////////

 

Clarke likes Bellamy's apartment. It's a lot lighter than hers -- she feels the urge to paint it. From the inside out, to try and capture the homey feel of it. She likes the record player he has ( _because he's a total nerd_ , Octavia says) and the albums he keeps stacked in a pile next to his television.

 

She likes the flannel throw blankets he keeps on his couch and on his bed, and she likes the way it feels when he puts one over her when she falls asleep on his couch after watching the game with him.

 

She'll never tell him, but she likes him a little bit too. They've never gotten along, not when she had just turned eighteen and was so headstrong the world couldn't stand in her way. That's when they met, and she decided upon meeting him that Bellamy Blake wasn't going to stand in her way, either.

 

She wouldn't let his mocking and calling her _princess_ deter her from finding herself and finding her place.

 

Bellamy was a pretty constant presence in her life after she met Octavia. She always envied the siblings for having each other, when Clarke felt alone for most of her life.

 

She doesn’t really understand for herself why she showed up at his apartment after she found out Finn was seeing someone else. She could have gone to Monty’s, who had become one of her closest friends in college. She could have snuck into Octavia’s apartment through the fire escape like she used to do during junior year just to see if she could.

 

She could have done all of those things, especially because Octavia and Monty had liked Finn, and had never told Clarke that he _didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground_ like Bellamy had when Clarke brought Finn to game night once.

 

She could have gone literally anywhere else, but she ended up at Bellamy’s in the middle of the night, and to his credit, he didn’t make fun of her once. She thinks it’s the Older Brother Instinct in him – he just let her in and let her cry, and didn’t say anything to make her feel worse than she already did.

 

She looks back on it now and knows that she never really expected Bellamy to try and make her feel worse. He might be an asshole half the time, but he wasn’t _cruel_.

 

The second time she shows up, she’s just had a fight with her mother. Octavia is out with Lincoln and isn’t answering her phone, and Monty is asleep. It’s 2am and Clarke doesn’t feel like being in her apartment alone, or at least that’s what she tells herself when she slumps down in front of Bellamy’s door after realizing that he’s not home, either.

 

When he finally shows up, he covers up his surprise quickly, and Clarke feels relief sweep through her in waves when he invites her in without a second thought. He lets her use his shower, and he orders them take out _at two in the morning_ and he lets her fall asleep on the couch before moving her to his bed.

 

He does all of those things without even asking her what’s bothering her, and she thinks she’s never liked Bellamy more than in that moment.

 

She’s grateful for him, she realizes, and she hopes that he knows.

 

///////

 

 _iii._  

After the first two times, Bellamy almost expects Clarke to show up in the middle of the night. The third time she does, it’s close to exams, and she claims her apartment is ‘too quiet to study’, which Bellamy can’t make heads or tails of.

 

He’s working on a paper too, so he doesn’t see any reason for her to leave. They spread their notebooks and books out on his coffee table, and work in silence, occasionally pausing to get snacks and caffeine.

 

They read over each other’s papers after they finish their first drafts, and of course, they argue. He’s annoyed that she managed to find every single grammatical error he made and left a little asterisk next to each one without explaining what was wrong with it, and she’s annoyed that he made the errors in the first place. He picks her paper apart and tells her she should argue her case more strongly, and she narrows her eyes at him and basically tells him to shove it.

 

They stay up until almost three in the morning making minute changes to each other’s papers, and the next day they both practically sleepwalk to class.

 

They both get A’s.

 

Bellamy grins and shakes his head when he finds a note taped to his front door later that night after he gets home from his shift at the bar.

 

“ _Thanks. Not that you were 100% right or anything. – C”_

He calls the bakery and has them deliver donuts to Clarke’s apartment the following morning.

 

/////////

 

“Isn’t this Clarke’s?” His sister asks from the kitchen and when he glances up from the TV, he sees the mug that Clarke uses when she ends up here.

 

“Maybe,” he says vaguely, and he can feel himself starting to turn red, which is _ridiculous_. He has nothing to feel ashamed of. He and Clarke are sort-of-friends now, and she comes over sometimes. So what?

 

“Since when does Clarke come here to _drink coffee_?” Octavia asks, like it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard, which he supposes it is, seeing as how the last time the three of them were together, he and Clarke fought so badly it nearly made Octavia cry. He still feels bad about it.

 

“She came here to study once,” he says, “You were at Lincoln’s and my apartment is closer than anyone else’s, I guess.” He says, and it’s not a total lie. Clarke _did_ tell him that Octavia is almost always at Lincoln’s now (which Bellamy had gritted his teeth upon hearing), and his apartment _is_ closer to hers than any of their other friends.

 

He’s aware of Octavia just staring at him from the kitchen, but he does his best to ignore her. He hasn’t tried to define whatever it is he and Clarke are doing (even though it’s _nothing_ , it’s _nothing_ ) and he doesn’t feel like having to explain himself to his sister of all people.

 

“Whatever, weirdo,” Octavia says, breezing back into the room and settling next to him on the couch. “I call dibs on being her maid of honor, though.”

 

Bellamy chokes on his beer.

 

///////

 

 _iv._  

There’s a period of time where Bellamy doesn’t see Clarke very much. Exams are over, and she’s started a summer job answering phones and helping a curator at one of the local art museums. When she tells him and Octavia about it, she’s practically shaking she’s so excited, and a tiny voice in the back of his head acknowledges how fucking _adorable_ it is.

 

They work opposite schedules, so some nights she comes in to the bar with Octavia and Harper, but usually she’s too tired after working all day. It’s weird, he thinks, not seeing her on the regular, and that’s the only explanation why he picks a fight with her the next time they see each other. Also, yes, he’s had a few drinks, but who can blame him? Octavia has announced she’s letting her lease run out to officially move in with Lincoln, and Clarke should have known that Bellamy would be in a bad mood about it. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

 

“Princess!” He calls when he sees her as he’s walking home. She lives only about three blocks from him, and must be walking home herself, and dimly in the back of his mind he realizes that she’s all dressed up. He wonders if she was on a date, and shakes off the thought as soon as it enters his head, and as soon as he realizes his fists are clenching at his sides against his will at the thought.

 

“Bellamy,” she says as she gets closer, and her eyes widen, a smirk firmly in place on her lips. “Wow, you’ve had a fun night, huh?”

 

He waves a dismissive hand at her, “I had a few beers with Miller.”

 

“A few, or the whole case?”

 

He frowns, “What are you, my _keeper_?”

 

She holds out her hands in surrender, “Forget it.” She turns like she’s going to walk away, and he feels bad immediately.

 

“Clarke, wait.”

 

When she turns back around, she has that crease in between her eyebrows like she gets when she’s thinking extra hard, and he wants to smooth it out with his fingers.

 

“Did you know Octavia is moving in with Lincoln? She told me tonight at dinner. She’s moving in with a guy only a year younger than me.” He laughs, but it’s clear he finds it anything but funny.

 

“Is that why you drank all the beer in the world?” Clarke asks, and he realizes with a start that she’s taken his arm, and they’re slowly making their way towards his apartment.

 

“There were shots too.”

 

“Sure, of course.”

 

“I just don’t get it. She loves her apartment. Why move?”

 

“She loves _Lincoln_ , Bell. He loves her too, you know.”

 

Bellamy grumbles. “I didn’t see you moving in with Finn the minute you thought you loved him,” he says, and when she freezes, he does too, his words sinking in. “Shit. _Shit_ , Clarke, I—“

 

“No, you’re right. I didn’t move in with him, but probably because he was already living with his girlfriend. I wouldn’t have had any space in the closet.” She says it as a joke, but her words are edged with anger, and he feels it in the pit of his stomach.

 

They walk the rest of the way to his apartment in silence, and when they get to the front door, he pauses to dig his keys out of his pocket. She’s pointedly not looking at him, glancing around at the street, her eyes narrowed and shoulders tense. “It’s late.” He says, and it’s an invitation.

 

“I live, like, two blocks from here.”

 

“Princess—“

 

“I just walked with you to make sure you didn’t wander out into traffic or something. I want to go home.”

 

“I didn’t mean—“

 

“You never _mean_ it, Bellamy, and that’s the problem! Sometimes you get in these moods where you just need to fight with someone, and usually that person is _me_ , and yeah that sucks, but I can deal with it. It’s the apologizing I can’t deal with.”

 

Bellamy sucks in a breath. They’ve never done this before. They bicker and they argue and it’s their _thing_. She’s never gotten this fed up before though. His first thought is that he’s somehow both too drunk and not drunk enough for this.

 

“You just _say things_ to people and you don’t think about what that person feels like afterwards! I mean, _shit_ , Bellamy. How do you think Octavia felt after she told you about moving and all you did was lecture her for an hour? You didn’t even tell her you were proud of her for making her _first adult decision_ in her life. You just went on and on about how Lincoln was all wrong for her. _Jesus_ , do you even hear yourself when you speak?”

 

“You don’t get to talk to me about my sister,” Bellamy says, feeling anger flare up inside of him, pointing a finger at Clarke.

 

She laughs, and it makes him angrier. “Cut the misogynistic bullshit, Bellamy.”

 

“I’m not being—“

 

“Yes you are! Look, I know you love your sister more than anything and you want to look after her, but you need to accept that she is a grown woman who can make her own decisions without your input.”

 

“Why are we even fighting about this? I thought you were mad at me for what I said about Finn!” He’s practically shouting at her, his drunken brain working into overdrive.

 

“We’re fighting about how you somehow lose the ability to show any compassion once that macho part of your brain takes over,” she snaps.

 

“It’s not me being _macho_ if I think she’s moving too fast.”

 

“It’s not your decision to make!” Clarke nearly shrieks. “She can do whatever she wants!”

 

“Like you did? Like how you were so ready to move in with a guy you barely knew? How did that work out for you, princess?”

 

She just looks at him like she’s been slapped and he hates that he can’t tell what she’s thinking. He always thought that for all their differences, at their core, he and Clarke were pretty similar. Now, he can’t tell why he ever thought that.

 

“I need to go home.” She says, and before he can get another word in, she’s turned away from him and heading down the street.

 

He watches her go, telling himself that he would do it for any girl that he knows who is walking alone in the city at night, but he can feel the guilt creeping up inside of him and he knows he’s going to feel like shit tomorrow for more than one reason.

 

The next day, he chugs a Gatorade, takes a pain pill, and shakes off what’s left of his hangover. He needs to apologize to Clarke, preferably before his sister gets wind of what happened and kicks his ass.

 

He goes to the art museum and finds her giving a tour to a group of kids, and he leans against a wall as he waits for her to finish up, taking the few minutes of privacy to admire how animated her face is as she tells them stories of knights and princesses and how some royal ladies and their paintings could launch a hundred ships.

 

As the kids file out of the room, her eyes land on him, and it feels like a punch to the stomach the way her eyes grow hard and a frown takes over her face.

 

“Bellamy.” She says when she gets closer, “I’m busy.”

 

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he says in a rush before she can get too far away from him, “You were right. I need to let Octavia live her life, and that stuff I said about you and Finn was uncalled for. I didn’t mean it.”

 

She crosses her arms and glares at him before she sighs, and her shoulders slump. “You know I don’t really think you’re an asshole, Bell. I just wish sometimes you would realize how much what you think matters to other people.”

 

“What?”

 

“Your sister wants your approval so badly. She’d do anything to get your blessing. I mean, she’s not going to sit around and wait for it, but she’d be a lot happier if she knew you were happy _for her_.”

 

“And what about you?” The words are out before he can stop them.

 

She sighs, “I don’t think I ever really loved Finn, and it shouldn’t matter to me anymore, but for whatever reason…” she huffs in frustration, “… for whatever reason, I care what you think, Bellamy.”

 

“Look, that relationship imploding was his fault, princess, not yours. I shouldn’t have judged you for it.”

 

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to live up to this image everyone has of me.” She brushes a piece of hair out of her eyes and something inside of him cracks at her next words. “I just thought I didn’t have to do that with you.”

 

“Clarke…” he starts, before he realizes that he genuinely doesn’t know what to say.

 

“I need to get back to work. I have another tour soon.”

 

When she walks away from him this time, he can’t ignore the emptiness that settles in his chest.

 

///////

 

Things change between Bellamy and Clarke after that. They make a concerted effort to only hang out with their other friends, never alone. Even then, it’s hard for Bellamy to forget how for a little while, they were _Bellamy and Clarke_.

 

There’s a spare bottle of shampoo in his shower that she left when she stayed over once, and that damn coffee mug still sits on a shelf in his kitchen. The corner of the couch that she always sat in has a blanket draped over it like it’s waiting for her to come back, and there’s one of her hoodies hanging on a peg by the door that he kept meaning to give back to her, but always forgot.

 

It’s stupid, how seamlessly she managed to fit into his life. It’s laughable how he never noticed it before.

 

He sort of misses her.

 

///////  
  
_v._

 

Clarke paces aimlessly around her apartment as she struggles to get the inspiration she needs to finish her latest canvas.

 

She’s tried two different times to start, and each of them made her want to throw her art kit out the window, so she’s started over for the third time, and she realizes that she’s way too preoccupied for painting.

 

She’s tried not to think about it, but she keeps dwelling on the last conversation she had with Bellamy when he came to see her at work, and she wonders if he really understood what she was trying to say.

 

She doesn’t think so, seeing as how he’s managed to avoid spending any time with her at all since they last fought. She knew that she was technically crossing a line with him by challenging how he dealt with his Octavia issues, but someone needed to.

 

She hadn’t expected him to shove the whole Finn situation back in her face, and she doesn’t think she is really ready to forgive him for it. She always thought he knew her better than that. She knows deep down that he was angry and drunk and isn’t the best person to deal with when he’s that way, but she thought that the two of them had reached a new understanding since she started spending more time at his apartment.

 

She thought they were finally becoming friends, and she had been really happy about it.

 

Sighing, she pushes all thoughts of Bellamy Blake out of her head. She tries again to start painting, but a knock on her door distracts her, and she practically throws down her paintbrush, groaning out loud as she stomps over to the door, wrenching it open. “This better be—“ she starts, cutting herself off halfway through her sentence at the sight of Bellamy standing there.

 

He’s not wearing anything spectacularly different – a blue Henley that she’s probably seen him wear a hundred times and jeans – but there’s something about the look on his face and the fact that he’s _at her apartment_ that throws her off.

 

She can count on one hand the number of times Bellamy Blake has been to her apartment. She and Octavia strong-armed him into helping her move in, but besides that, he’s almost never here, especially not alone. Especially not alone, with a box of donuts from that place down the street that she loves.

 

“Remember the first day we met and you called me an asshole?”

 

Clarke can’t help but laugh, though she tries to smother the sound when she sees him smile.

 

“I talked to Octavia,” he tells her, “I told her I was sorry for trying to be her parent and her brother all at once, and she basically told me to get my head out of my ass and come over here and apologize to you.”

 

“To me?”  Clarke is floored, because while she did tell Octavia that she and Bellamy weren’t really speaking, she never told her what he said that prompted it.

 

“Apparently I’ve become a ‘mopey idiot’ without you around to keep me in line, Princess.”

 

That look is back on his face again, the same one he had when she opened the door to find him standing there, and something about it has butterflies taking flight in her stomach. His eyes keep roving over her face, never settling anywhere for too long, like he’s trying to memorize what she looks like. She shivers.

 

“These are for you,” he says, holding out the box of donuts to her, and she grins, turning around to take them into the kitchen with her. She can feel him warm at her back as she walks, and suppresses the urge to shiver again.

 

“I’m going to get fat if you don’t—“ she stops halfway through her sentence, her throat becoming impossibly tight as she opens the box of donuts, her eye catching on a piece of metal taped to the inside of the box.

 

It’s a key.

 

She thinks it’s a key to Bellamy’s apartment, and she doesn’t know if she wants to laugh, or cry.

 

“You don’t have to keep it, but I just thought that, well, you end up there so much anyway, and this way you won’t have to wait for me to let you in if I’m not there, and you left your shampoo, so—“

 

Clarke cuts him off by throwing her arms around his neck, a feeling of _belonging_ hitting her so hard she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

 

So, the only thing left to do, she decides, is to kiss him.

 

/////

 

It takes Bellamy all of three seconds to respond to Clarke’s kiss, to memorize the way it feels to have her pressed up against him, her soft curves melting into him as he kisses her back.

 

This hadn’t been quite the outcome he was expecting when he thought about getting a spare key made for her, but he can’t say he’s complaining.

 

He’s missed her over the last few weeks, and once he admitted it to himself, it was a lot easier to tell his sister. He was at his wit’s end and was tired of feeling like something was missing. He knew he owed Octavia an apology anyway, so deciding to kill two birds with one stone was easy.

 

Deciding to give Clarke Griffin a key to his apartment was not. Well, the decision to give it to her wasn’t difficult. It was the actual process of doing it that he didn’t know how to handle.

 

Judging by her reaction, he must have done something right. He fees like they kiss for hours, but he knows it can’t have been more than a minute or two. As he slowly puts her back down on her feet (and when did _that_ happen?) and she unwinds her arms from around his neck, he smiles at the blush that’s taken over her face. He wants to see it all the time, he thinks, and judging by the way she _won’t stop looking at him_ , he thinks they’re on the same page on this one.

 

“I missed you,” he tells her, and the smile on her face at his words is worth all the agonizing he did about coming over here to do this.

 

“I missed you too,” she says, her voice soft and gentle. “Plus I left my favorite hoodie at your place.”

 

He laughs, and when he looks down at her, she’s got this _look_ on her face, and he wants to see it every day for the rest of his life. “Clarke… I’m sorry for what I said. About Finn, about my sister… all of it. It turns out I sort of care what you think about me too.”

 

“Sort of?”

 

“I care. I care what you think of me, and I like that you care what I think of you. I should never have let you believe that I think you’re anything but brilliant and beautiful and _smart_ , and—“

 

She shuts him up with her lips again, and he thinks that if this is going to be how they argue from now on, it’s a battle he is more than willing to concede on a regular basis.

 

 _If this is love, then love is easy_  
it’s the easiest thing to do  
if this is love, then love completes me  
cause it feels like I’ve been missing you

**Author's Note:**

> come cry with me on [tumblr!](http://dreamingundone.tumblr.com)


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